Books : Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

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Author name: Tim Jeal

: Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 916.7042092
EAN num: 9780300126259
ISBN number: 0300126255
Label: Yale University Press
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 608
Printing Date: September 28, 2007
Publishing house: Yale University Press
Sale Popularity Level: 99050
Studio: Yale University Press



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Editor's Notes and Comments:

Product Description:
'A magnificent new life . . . [and] a superb adventure story. . . . There have been many biographies of Stanley, but Jeal's is the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable and exhaustive, profiting from his acess to an immense new trove of Stanley material.' -- Paul Theroux, front page, New York Times Book Review 

Henry Morton Stanley, so the tale goes, was a cruel imperialist who connived with King Leopold II of Belgium in horrific crimes against the people of the Congo. He also conducted the most legendary celebrity interview in history, opening with, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

 

But these perceptions are not quite true, Tim Jeal shows in this grand and colorful biography. With unprecedented acess to previously closed Stanley family archives, Jeal reveals the amazing extent to which Stanley’s public career and intimate life have been misunderstood and undervalued. Jeal recovers the reality of Stanley’s life—a life of almost impossible extremes—in this moving story of tragedy, adventure, disappointment, and success.

 

Few have started life as disadvantaged as Stanley. Rejected by both parents and consigned to a Welsh workhouse, he emigrated to America as a penniless eighteen-year-old. Jeal vividly re-creates Stanley’s rise to success, his friendships and romantic relationships, and his  life-changing decision to assume an American identity. Stanley’s epic but  unfairly forgotten African journeys are thrillingly described, establishing  the explorer as the greatest to set foot on the continent. Few biographies can claim so thoroughly to reappraise a reputation; few portray a more extraordinary historical figure.

 

(20070301)



Customer Reviews
User popularity level: out of 5 stars

Rated by buyers 3 out of 5 stars - Maybe a little too much detail
The problem with this book is that it's 475 pages long. If you're gonna read a 475-page book it better be about something you're awfully interested in, and I was only marginally interested in Stanley. The research I've done indicates that this is the definitive book about him, which is great and all, but I didn't really need a definitive book about him; a 300-page summary would've done fine.

I'm realizing that 300 is the right number of pages for me. After that I start to feel like I'm working.

In addition, I find Jeal's take on Stanley overly apologetic. I get it, he wasn't quite as bad as everyone makes him out to be, but that doesn't mean he was a totally righteous dude; Jeal goes too far sometimes.

Jeal's a good writer though, easy to read, so for a 475-page book it did move pretty quickly.

I wouldn't call this required reading unless you're a serious Stanley buff.


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - An outstanding biography, I presume!
This is well written and well research biography. Captures the cultural and personal elements of Stanley's life. One experiences the details and struggles of Stanley's explorations in Africa as well as the range of his personal and romantic relationships. Both honest and fair in assessing Stanley's strengths & weaknesses. One unfortunate flaw: there are no maps to clarify the routes of Stanley's explorations.


Rated by buyers 4 out of 5 stars - One of History's Misunderstood Characters
This book tells the story of one of history's most misunderstood and mischaracterized individuals. Henry Stanley rose from poverty to become one of the world's most effective but least known explorers, uncovering central Africa's mysteries and unwittingly creating the groundwork for the rape and bondage of a continent. From the famous but never-uttered "Dr. Livingston, I presume," to the reduced public stature resulting from the self-serving detrimental statements of others, Stanley emerges as a complex man worthy of a better and truer place in history than he accomplished. In addition to the personal tale, this book opens to the reader the state of 19th century Africa and is worth reading if only from this perspective.


Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - Stanley's Sad and Glorious Life
Jeal's wonderful biography of Stanley succeeds on many levels, as biography, history, psychology, cultural analysis and literature. The book brings to life his three great African journeys that made him famous but also captures the other parts of his life: his humble upbringing in Wales, his time in America and his later years in England. Stanley was a complicated man and, after reading the book, I felt I understood him.

The book also provides a good picture of Victorian England and the politics of the European powers towards Africa in the late nineteenth century. His book also reflects on the subsequent developments in Africa that colour how we now look at the exploration and colonization of Africa.

Jeal was provided acess to a vast trove of Stanley's writings that were previously unavailable. A fascinating part of this book is to see how new information, combined with a writer's keen analysis, can completely upend the standard view of a person or historical event.

All in all, a thoroughly interesting book.



Rated by buyers 5 out of 5 stars - The Best Biography of Stanley
Years ago I stumbled on a book of fiction about Stanley's captaining of the ill-fated relief mission to "save" Emin Pasha in the late 1880's. I simply couldn't believe that what I was reading about the horrors of the journey were real, so began by reading my very first Stanley biography. The horrors were real, and the courage required of African explorers was almost beyond imagination. Stanley, more than any man, knew that dark side.

From the beginning I've been riveted by the man's accomplishments and (like T.E. Lawrence, as another review has perceptively noted) his many attempts to 'create himself' for the media to cover up a sad, neglected, Dickensian childhood. The most recent biography of Stanley I read, by John Bierman, depressed me, because it leaned so hard on Stanley's toughness that he came out as a brutal bully with no redeeming features whatsoever. My initial admiration waned.

It is thus a delight to find in such a superb, well-written, and thoroughly researched biography as this, that Henry Stanley was a genuine human being, flawed and fascinating, gentle and brutal, demanding and obsessed by duty. Jule presents a multi-dimensional character and one's respect for other biographers, who've simply beaten Stanley for the sins of his generation, wanes in direct proportion to the realization of all that Stanley achieved in spite of his inner demons. That sad, abandoned child lived in Stanley until the day he died, but what remarkable courage he showed in spite of it! And what permanent changes he helped bring to world history, even if others took his great explorations and made horrible things of them.

Also, with all due respect to many of the earlier, brilliant African explorers such as Burton or Stanley Baker, how remarkably free of racism and paternalistic 'cant' Stanley was. Burton himself was almost a pathological racist. There is no trace of this in Stanley. Again and again, when he lost his temper, it was because his fellow whites invariably treated the natives with (at best) contempt and, at worst, with brutality. The irony that it has become fashionable to portray Stanley himself as a brutal racist, is simply one of many in this biography.

This should remain by far the best, most thorough, and most balanced biography of this remarkable man for the foreseeable future. Thank you, Mr. Jeal, for portraying the whole man again. And what a remarkable story it is, truly starker than any fiction!

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